<
Back to Spirit in Life"A
heartfelt prayer is not a recital with the lips. It is a
yearning from within which expresses itself in every word,
every act, nay, every thought of man. When an evil thought
successfully assails him, he may know that he has offered
but a lip service to prayer."--
Ghandi

You
know that expression, "nothing left but a hope and a
prayer"? Well, in many respects, that hope and prayer are
more powerful than we previously gave credit for! In fact,
prayer can be a powerful healing modality, whether we pray
or are the object of someone's prayers.

The
word prayer comes from the Latin precarius, "obtained by
begging" and precari, "to entreat" (ask earnestly, beseech,
implore). And that is what many of us do when we pray: we
put our hopes into words and send them out of ourselves.
Prayer is used by every major culture and religion,
worldwide, and it is accessible to everyone, whether
involved in organized religion or not. It is an appeal to a
wisdom greater than our own.

"Prayer
is", according to theologian Ann Ulanov and Prof. Barry
Ulanov, "the most fundamental, primordial, and important
language humans speak. Prayer starts without words and often
ends without them. It knows its own evasions, its own
infinite variety of dodges. It works some of the time in
signs and symbols, lurches when it must, leaps when it can,
has several kinds of logic at its disposal."

Prayer
Works

There
have been many studies about the efficacy of prayer for a
host of circumstances. Particular evidence of interest
include the effects of prayer on health.

A
study on intercessary prayer (where the object of the prayer
does not know he/she is being prayed for) that was
randomized and double-blind studied the effects of prayer on
coronary care unit patients in hospital. All patients
received appropriate medical treatment. However, the group
which was prayed for had significant health benefit from the
intercession:

Significantly
less likely to develop pulmonary edema-a condition in
which the lungs fill with fluid because the heart cannot
pump properly (6 versus 18).

Significantly
less likely to require insertion of a tube into the
throat to assist breathing (0 versus 12).

Less
likely to die (but this difference was not statistically
significant).

Because
there have been criticisms of study designs where humans are
subjected to intercessary prayer, follow up studies have
used nonhuman subjects.

According
to Larry Dossey M.D., in a survey of 131 controlled
experiments on spiritual healing, it was found that
prayed-for rye grass grew taller; prayed-for yeast resisted
the toxic effects of cyanide; prayed-for test-tube bacteria
grew faster.

Another
study used seeds soaked in salt-water to prevent
germination. One group of seeds was a control, the second
were prayed for using directed prayer "please help these
seeds germinate", and third group was prayed for using
nondirected prayer like "thy will be done". None of the
seeds from the first group sprouted, some of the seeds from
the second group sprouted, but 2-4X as many seeds sprouted
in the third group as in the second group -- those seed that
received nondirected prayer.

And
the prayer need not be locally delivered. In several
experiments, volunteers visualized stimulating or retarding
the growth of bacteria and fungi and achieved significantly
positive results from as far as 15 miles away.

At
the Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio, Texas,
researchers took blood samples from 32 volunteers, isolated
their red blood cells (RBCS) and placed the samples in a
room on the other side of the building. Then the researchers
placed the RBCs in a solution designed to swell and burst
them, a process that can be measured extremely accurately.
Next the researchers asked the volunteers to pray for the
preservation of some of the RBCS. To help them visualize,
the researchers projected color slides of healthy RBCS. The
praying significantly slowed the swelling and bursting of
the RBCS.

Experiments
reviewed in Dossey's work also showed that prayer positively
affected:

High
Blood Pressure

Wounds

Heart
Attacks

Headaches,
and

Anxiety.

The
subjects in these studies included:

Water

Enzymes

Bacteria

Fungi

Yeast

Red
blood cells

Cancer
cells

Pacemaker
cells

Seeds

Plants

Algae

Moth
larvae

Mice

Chicks

The
processes that had been influenced by prayer were:

Activity
of enzymes

The
growth rate of leukemic white blood cells

Mutation
rates of bacteria

Germination
and growth rates of various seeds

Firing
rate of pacemaker cells of the heart

Healing
rates of wounds

The
size of goiters and tumors

Time
required to awaken from anesthesia

Autonomic
effects such as electrodermal activity of the skin, rates
of hemolysis of red blood cells and hemoglobin levels.

Given
all of this evidence, no-one is quite sure how prayer works,
only that it does. There is a lot about the world that we do
not know. Even though we often act as though we have a
handle on the nature of our world and the universe, the
truth is that we don't actually have a model of how
consciousness may interact with physical reality other than
those found in our spiritual heritage, where there is a
recognition of the process but no need to explain it. There
are clues in physics which relate to non-locality of
physical reality which I will not go into here, but we are
far away from understanding those processes intimately on
anything but an intuitive sense.

Regardless,
we can use what we do know: that prayer does work to help us
in the same sense as any other therapy. We can use it to
help others, and we can use it to help ourselves. I keep a
jar of patient names and turn my attention to it regularly,
in a prayer for the well being of those persons that have
entrusted their care and story to me. Each of us has the
ability to use this knowledge to help.

How
Should I Pray?

Prayer
is individual. There is no right or wrong way. Pray with
your heart and keep your mind open to results.